


Lettered

by softlybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-08 00:59:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12244026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlybarnes/pseuds/softlybarnes
Summary: People are born with their soulmate’s name written on the palm of their hand.Y/N is proud of the name on her hand, until she isn't.





	Lettered

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading ❤️❤️

When Y/N was a child she wore her tattoo with pride. She would hold her palm out and let all examine the intricate, delicate lettering. Her mother and father smiled on her. Their daughter’s soulmate was a hero.

It was also slightly worrying. Why then, had their daughter been cursed with a dead soulmate? Even one that was a hero? They worried she would become a pariah. They worried she would always be alone, no one would want her when they already had their own soulmates. But they let her find happiness and comfort in the man’s name written on her palm. She was happy and claimed all through her life that it didn’t matter, alone or not she was happy with the name on her palm. Y/N had been proud of the name.

Soon enough the world would be cruel, as it so often is.

So, Y/N grows up, wearing a hero’s name on her hand, tattooed in deep dark letters that mold and shift. The letters seem to change over time, when she’s young they’re a swirling scrawl, delicate and beautiful, but as she got older the letters became heavier, darker, rougher. _James Buchanan Barnes_. She’s still proud. He’s still hers. And then…it all falls apart. She supposes the suspicious looks of the changing letters should have clued her in to what was to come.

James Barnes is the Winter Soldier and the Winter Soldier is evil and horrible and despicable. The Winter Soldier kills people, rips families apart, leaves the innocent behind him in dead lines. The day Shield falls, she watches the chaos on television and feels eyes boring into her from every direction. Because what does that say about her that her soulmate is a murderer? An assassin? A cold, dead-eyed killer?

It says she must also be those things. It says that there is something corrupted and evil and wrong in her soul. People start to avoid her at work. They cower and complain to management that they’re terrified of her, of that name on her palm. What if he comes to claim her? What then? Would they go on a murderous rampage together?

And so slowly, one by one, everyone in her life abandons her. Her home disintegrates around her, she’s left with nothing. Friends that she had known for years suddenly hate her and what she represents. Y/N tells them that she wants nothing to do with him, that _she’s_ most afraid of him out of everyone. What’s she to do if he decides to look for her? But no one believes her because the greatest joy anyone ever experiences is meeting their soulmate. They equate the Winter Soldier with Y/N, and rip away her sense of self.

And so she covers her left hand with a glove, keeps her head down, and feeds a burning hatred for the Winter Soldier. She moves cities, and tries to start over, avoids the news at all costs. Y/N moves again and again and again. Afraid that he might show up, anywhere, everywhere. He looms around ever every corner, stalking her in her worst dreams and nightmares.

She finds that her deep love and admiration for him has turned to ice and hatred. If she never had to look at him she would be living her best life.

Even living anonymously is hard. She can’t let anyone close lest they see her soulmate’s name and abandon her. Even when the news claims him to be a hero again, that Captain America has set the record straight, she still hates him.

She hates him, and fears him, with every ounce of her being.

And then she meets him.

 

~

 

It’s just like any other day, a nice day in fact. The sky is clear, there’s just hint of a nip in their air as the sun shines down on the crisp autumn leaves. Y/N walks to her job in the train station terminal, sits in her anonymous booth, and people watches. She sells tickets and chats with customers who remember her and those that don’t. She buys a hot chocolate at lunch and it’s because of that hot chocolate that she thinks her hand is burning when the building collapses.

A boom echoes hard through the terminal, air rushing violently, before everything starts to tremble. And shake. And finally with an earthshattering roar it all starts to come apart. The chocolate tumbles off the desk and onto her left hand, scalding the hand with the name of the man she hates.

Y/N doesn’t realize, under the pain of the burn, that the tingle means her soulmate is nearby, letters dancing in anticipation across her skin. But then the roof comes down and it doesn’t much matter. She’s trapped and there’s smoke and fire and hell raining around her. Someone is screaming and Y/N thinks something might’ve broken.

She kicks out uselessly at the rubble holding her down but she isn’t strong enough. Not that many people would be able to lift a fucking building off of themselves, she thinks bitterly, before the panic starts to set in. She’s trapped and something is burning and there’s no fucking air.

Y/N doesn’t want to die. She can’t. She isn’t ready. The person screaming, she realizes suddenly, is her. She shuts her mouth, biting her tongue until she tastes blood. She’s going to die, and no one will know her name or remember her.

As the smoke smell starts to intensify, her consciousness slipping away, the slab of concrete trapping her legs is lifted, allowing her to squirm out from under it. And she’s met with the only nightmare she’s ever known.

James Buchanan Barnes smiles at her, holds out a hand, and says something to her. It’s meant to be comforting but all she sees is sharp teeth and shadows and a hand waiting to squeeze the life out of her.

“Stay away from me!” Her voice is hoarse and horrible, her lungs filled with smoke and soot and death. Y/N scrabbles backward dizzily. “Don’t touch me!”

The comforting grin drops immediately, replaced with harrowing sadness and defeat. “You need help. You’re going to die if you stay here.” His voice is nice, she thinks distantly as a warmth starts to consume her heart, a tenderness that scares her. It’s what everyone always talks about, that warmth and softness.

A fit of coughing wracks her lungs, until her lips turn bloody. “What do you care, Winter Soldier? _I hate you_.” Y/N makes her voice as terrible as she can, as violent and hateful as the teardrop of love spreading in her soul will allow it to be.

His eyes dim further, heart beating painfully against his chest. “I know. But I won’t let you die.” The Winter Soldier grips her arm and tugs her into a standing position, ignoring her weak struggles and protests against him. He scoops her up and makes his way through the burned out husk of what is left of the train station.

Y/N claws at him, rasps for him to let her go, to please don’t hurt her. She gets in a good swipe at his face, cheek turning red, nails scratching lines into his neck. When the air seems not to be available anymore, super soldier desperately trying to navigate his way out of the rubble by Tony’s instruction in his ear, she passes out. All the fight leaves her, body going entirely limp.

His hand is warm, tingling where her name used to reside on his right palm.

Finally he makes it out of the rubble of the collapsed building. He marches past the team, past reporters and press, right to the medics. “Please,” he begs one of them, lying her on a stretcher, “She breathed in a lot of smoke.”

As they examine her Bucky reaches forward and pries off the glove covering her left hand.

 _James Buchanan Barnes_.

“Buck…” Steve is leaning over his shoulder, having worried about his friend so concerned over one particular civilian. “She’s yours,” his voice is astonished.

“She hates me.” Bucky’s voice is emotionless, as though it’s expected and not all that surprising. “She told me so,” he continues before Steve can protest. “I’m hers,” he whispers as more emergency personnel arrive and a medic tells them they’re taking her to the hospital. The warmth everyone always talks about is spreading through his chest, as well as the protectiveness. “But she’s not mine. She hates me.”

Already he wants to see her again as the ambulance doors slam shut.

But they have a job to finish and so he walks away, back to find more bodies.

 

~

 

As soon as they’re allowed Bucky goes to the hospital she was taken to. Steve comes with him because that’s what he does and they stand together in a too small corridor still in their tactical suits. Natasha is forced to bring them a change of clothes, the hospital staff graciously allowing them to use their facilities to clean up.

And for whatever reason the staff lets him into the room, to sit by her bed and memorize her face before she wakes and its contorted in hatred and fear again. Because more than revulsion, there had been terror. She must believe the stories then, what people said about him.

Bucky sits by her bed for hours, holding her hand and waiting. He closes his eyes and hopes, by some miracle, that maybe she’ll want him, forgive him, let the protectiveness take over every part of him. Already, he can’t imagine being away from her.

Her eyes blink open slowly and for a moment she doesn’t seem to remember that she should hate him, gaze soft and trusting on his. But then her hand is ripped away and an accusation is written in her eyes. “Get out.”

“Please-,”

“If you think that because your name is on my hand that I’m just going to-,”

“I don’t think that.” He interrupts her, “I’m sorry. For whatever happened to you because of my name, I’m sorry. I know it couldn’t have been easy. But…please you have to believe me, I’m not that person anymore. I never was…I-,” Bucky shakes his head. “I thought you were dead. That you must have died so long ago, for me to have never found you in a hundred years.”

She stays silent for a moment. “No one wanted me because of you,” she starts quietly. “They thought I must be a criminal too. They said there must be something wrong with me. Everyone hated me.” Y/N doesn’t know why she says it, part of her hoping that maybe he could help take some of the pain away, that the warmth in her chest might grow. His voice is like velvet, like honey, like home. “Once, I remember it was snowing and the road was icy, someone attacked me. They said I was corrupted and disgusting and bad and that I didn’t deserve to live. And so I had to move, so no one would know me. Or what was on my hand.” Her voice has grown weaker and weaker as she continued, lungs burning from the smoke and effort to keep from crying. “I’ve been alone ever since.”

Bucky wants to touch her, to reach out and comfort her, but stops himself, figuring it would only worsen the situation and break his heart when she jumped away. “I’m sorry someone hurt you because of me. I want to explain-,”

“I don’t need an explanation,” she replies harshly, refusing to look at him again. “I know your story and I-,”

“Please,” he whispers. “I don’t even know your name. I just know that my hand is fucking burning and my chest is so warm and full and I don’t want this to stop. I-,”

“Why don’t you know my name? It’s on your hand.” She knows he must have her name. His name is on her left hand, which means her name is on his right. And as far as Y/N knows Bucky has retained his real right arm.

Bucky slowly holds out his right hand, showing he means her no harm. His palm has a violent gash across it, scarred over many, many times. “I was so glad when I realized I still had your name when I first fell. But…it was too much. Triggered memories. And so they took you away from me. Slowly, one cut at a time.”

Seemingly in a trance she reaches out and takes his hand, fingers running over the thick scars that had savagely crossed out her name. “You were alone too.” Her fingers curve over his, “And for much longer.”

“I knew it was you the second I laid eyes on you. I thought for sure the warmth, the sting in my palm, had to mean something else. But then I saw you and my body filled with that love and protectiveness they talk about and I knew.” He pauses as she continues to examine the scar, taking the opportunity to observe her curiosity. When she looks up and sees him watching her, her face closes again and she releases his hand.

Y/N doesn’t look at him as she says, “I’m sorry they hurt you because of me.”

“They hurt me for a lot of reasons, none that were your fault.”

“I’ve hated you for so long.” She swallows harshly. “I ran away from you and from other people because of your name. But I think…maybe I don’t want to hate you anymore.” She holds her hand out, palm up. Bucky tentatively takes her hand and traces the letters of his own name. Y/N whispers her name to him then, giving him something precious, something he’d been searching for since he’d gotten away from Hydra.

Bucky has never been a lucky man but in that moment he feels like the luckiest man in the world. “I don’t want you to hate me either, though it’s understandable.” Something about the way he says that makes her want to disagree with him, to tell him it isn’t true, that he’s lovable and good. Because that same protective warmth is spreading though her veins and his pain is now hers. “When you’re released from the hospital and you’re feeling better,” his heart pounds with anxiety because not hating someone is a far cry from liking them or caring about them. “Maybe I could take you on a date?”

For the first time she smiles at him, and Bucky never wants her to stop. “Sure.” And then her face softens as she turns her hand out of his, making his heart jump again, before taking his hand in her own and tracing over the scars. She brings his hand to her mouth and kisses the scar as Bucky’s cheeks turn a light pink color. “I’m so sorry,” her eyes droop and then she abruptly falls asleep, apparently exhausted. He kisses her hair and takes his leave.

 

~

 

Y/N has been back at her apartment for a few weeks when she gets a call. Bucky asks her to go out and she agrees, looking down at her hand which she had never put the glove back on, wearing the name with a pride she hasn’t felt in a while. He says he’ll pick her up at six and she says that’s fine before hanging up and panicking. What is she supposed to wear? Where would he take her? How could he like her when she had thought so horribly of him?

But Bucky is seemingly easy going. He doesn’t seem to mind she looks half a mess when she opens her door but kisses her cheek sweetly and hands her a small bunch of flowers. She adores them, she thinks all the love she felt for him most of her life might be rushing back. It’s like missing someone and finally getting them back, finally seeing them after a few years apart.

He’s kind, and takes her dancing and out to dinner. He holds her hand and takes her to the top of Stark Tower and smiles at the way her eyes light up. Bucky doesn’t judge her on her previous opinion of him and no one mentions the Winter Soldier all evening.

He’s lovely and perfect and she thinks maybe the universe knows something after all. 

Bucky walks her back to her apartment, all the way to her door, fingers twisting nervously at his side. “Thanks for coming out with me, Y/N. I hope you had a good time and that I might have changed your opinion about me, this me at least.” Little does he know that since the hospital a wild love for the man has been growing inside her, blooming and twisting vines around her heart.

She murmurs an apology. “I’m sorry, Bucky. Truly. I was…There’s no excuse. I’m glad you gave me a chance too.” Y/N takes his hand in hers, pressing her letters to his scars. “I’m glad I have your name.” Bucky freezes, not daring to believe he heard correctly, as a slow, happy blush creeps up his neck. 

When nothing happens, Y/N hoping for a kiss, she lets go of his hand embarrassedly. She ducks through the door whispering a goodbye.

And since Bucky is a gentleman he waits until her door is locked and then hoofs it down the hallway in a blind panic, because he had wanted to kiss her so badly it hurt. Berating himself for not doing so, he whirls when she calls out after him, thinking something was wrong, that he had missed something, some threat or danger.

But she’s just standing in her doorway with a small smile on her face. “Y’know…I was kinda hoping you might kiss me before you left.”

And really when your beautiful soulmate says that to you there’s only one thing to do. He marches back down the hall, takes her face carefully between his palms and kisses her full on the mouth. She giggles against him and smiles into the kiss. “You’re lovely. I hope I get to kiss you all the time. Everyday. Forever,” She says. It’s more, really, than he could have ever hoped for.  


End file.
